Two years ago, the SHRM Employee Benefits Survey, which offers a comprehensive view of the support employers offer employees, listed some 175 available benefits.

In 2024, that number rose to 216—a 23% increase.

“There is a huge amount of different benefits employers can provide now, and more new ideas come up all the time,” says Daniel Stunes, manager of data monetization with SHRM Data and Insights.

There are the mainstay benefits, of course—health care offerings, retirement options, and paid time off. There are also education benefits, financial benefits, volunteering benefits, and family care benefits, which have become more popular in recent years.

Then, there’s the growing number of niche benefits. Think menopause support and grandparent leave, both of which made their first appearance in SHRM’s survey in 2024.

With so many benefits now on the table, employers have a big decision to make: which of these dozens of perks to offer their workers.

“It is getting difficult for employers to figure out what benefits to include,” says Sera-Leigh Ghouralal, researcher at the Integrated Benefits Institute (IBI), a national nonprofit research organization and business association serving more than 1,600 employer and other members. “The decision-making process is complicated by the necessity to balance cost, relevance, and employee appeal.”

Sure, comprehensive health care coverage, retirement benefits, and paid time off are table stakes and will likely always be a part of employers’ core offerings. (SHRM research, for instance, finds that 97% of organizations make some form of health coverage available to their employees.) But increasingly, employers—both in an effort to stay competitive in a still-hot job market and as a way to help support employees and improve their well-being—are turning to a growing number of other benefits, as well. The approach is less one-size-fits-all, and instead more nuanced, more tailored.

“Traditionally, companies would approach benefits from the standpoint of, ‘What is something we can offer that benefits the most amount of people?’ Now we’re at the point of, ‘The vast majority of companies provide health care, mental health care, some kind of leave program, and some kind of retirement program. So, how can I be more competitive in the marketplace?’ ” Stunes says. “That’s when we see some of these specific benefits. If you have this big, long list of extra benefits, some may apply, some may not, but I think that shows you’re trying to reach some of the groups and make a difference.”

So, the question is: How do employers decide exactly what to offer employees, especially for benefits that go beyond the core offerings?

Many employers are turning to a tried-and-true, but often underused, method: asking their employees.

“It’s really about managing employees’ needs,” says Calven Engstrom, a data sourcing specialist at SHRM. “At the end of the day, it’s doing what you think would make your employees happy.”

Getting Employee Feedback

Many employers are turning to data-driven strategies to find out exactly what kind of supports employees are looking for, Ghouralal says. This includes employee surveys, focus groups, and other forms of direct feedback to gauge what benefits employees value most. IBI’s research shows that employers typically collect data on a quarterly basis, though Ghouralal suggests aiming for ongoing feedback through more regular team and one-on-one meetings.

Amanta Mazumdar, vice president of total rewards at Hilton, says employee feedback is key when choosing benefits. Each year, the hotel giant sends all team members a comprehensive survey with some 50 questions, as well as open-ended questions that allow workers to offer free-form feedback.

“We comb through all of those comments to see how they relate to total rewards. We think, ‘Is there a benefit that can help address this?’ ” he says. “What drives our strategy is what our team members are telling us, where they need help, and trying to address their needs.”

Hilton also uses other data sources, including industry benchmarks and meetings with recruiters, to determine what kinds of benefits job candidates are looking for.

In recent years, some of that feedback led Hilton to focus on benefits for additional family members, including caregiving and pet benefits. “There was a lot we heard in our focus groups around team members who were not just taking care of children, but [also] taking care of parents or elderly family members or friends, even pets. It was amazing how many people talked about pet care,” Mazumdar says.

Cassandra Pratt, CHRO of Progyny, a New York City-based health care and benefit firm with roughly 620 employees, says her company uses a variety of data inputs to make decisions on what benefits to include in its portfolio. That includes regularly conducted employee surveys, both general and benefit-specific; stay and exit interviews; and external benchmarking. The company also looks at its medical claims data to “better understand what treatments are trending in our populations and how we can evolve our offerings to better support employees both for critical care and wellness,” she says. “Employee input is necessary to create a benefits package that meets their needs.”

As a result of what it has discovered, Progyny has implemented a number of changes in recent years, according to Pratt. “We’ve introduced a range of policies that address some of the more difficult aspects of our employees' personal lives,” she says.

Those include additions of parental loss leave and NICU leave; mentorship programs; financial guides; and free mental health services, Pratt says. Progyny also is in the process of adding a more robust primary care option to increase access for all employees.

The expanded benefits roster has been a big boon to the company. It’s helped grow the number of employees by 285% in the past four years and led to an 84% retention rate, Pratt says.

Stunes says that’s part of the reason for embracing innovative offerings: both the employer and employees benefit.

“Employees get additional benefits available to them, and employers are rewarded not only with increased loyalty and retention from their current employees, but also by having unique benefits to help differentiate their company to potential new hires during the recruitment process,” he says.

Paying Attention to the Market

Market trends and what’s happening in the news often play into companies’ benefits decisions, as well. Dire statistics around mental health, with high rates of depression, anxiety, and stress over the past several years, have caused many employers to beef up mental health offerings. Financial health support has also been a focus as sky-high inflation and elevated interest rates have taken a toll on employees’ pocketbooks—and on their state of mind.

In the case of menopause support—a rising benefit trend embraced by companies including Microsoft and Sanofi—a growing and open conversation about women going through that phase in their lives, coupled with new legislation, is making employers think about the benefit.

Several high-profile groups and people—including actor Halle Berry—are advocating for menopause research, training, and education. Additionally, a bipartisan Senate bill introduced in May that would fund additional federal research into menopause, along with physician training and other types of support, could signal increasing attention to menopause as a health care and benefits issue.

“With things like menopause, I think it’s becoming more a part of the conversation,” Stunes says. “The more comfortable people are talking about it, the more businesses hear about it. And the more businesses hear about it, the more they realize, ‘Maybe we should do something about that.’ ”

The 2024 SHRM Employee Benefits Survey found that 17% of employers provide menopause-specific support, such as counseling and education, while another 2% offer menopause or menstrual leave above what is already covered by regular sick time.

Employees Being More Open

One of the biggest overall trends employers are uncovering through their interviews, surveys, and focus groups is that employees are speaking up about the kind of help they are looking for. That wasn’t always the case, but as home and work lives blend and stressors soar, in part due to an increase in remote work, the pandemic, and a myriad of well-being challenges, employees are increasingly more open to telling employers what they need—and sometimes expect.

Listening to employees’ pain points, concerns, and needs is important, Ghouralal says, but the real difference comes when employers take action. Employee survey findings aren’t any good if nothing comes out of them.

“Employees definitely want to be heard, but more than that, they want to see actionable change from their feedback,” she says. “The key to maneuvering through the plethora of benefits being offered these days is to listen and communicate with employees and focus on the needs of your specific workforce—what’s working for another organization might not be what will work for you.”

This article courtesy of Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM)